The World According to Mommy

Yesterday Oprah’s show was about decluttering your home, and her guest was organizational expert Peter Walsh. Peter went to a few homes and helped people tackle majorly messy areas in their homes. He helped them figure out what to keep and what to donate, he gave rules about only keeping things that are useful (and you must have a specific use in mind) or that you love, and he instructed us to get rid of any article of clothing that we haven’t worn in six months.

I have heard all of these tips before. Nothing he said was new to me. So if I know all of this, why can’t I put it into practice, and why isn’t my house perfectly clean and organized?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m lazy. Maybe I’m not focused enough to take the 30 minutes, or one hour, or five weeks it would take to declutter all the various areas in my home. There are too many distractions. Plus, I really have a very busy schedule which includes serious time devoted to catching up on all the shows I’ve recorded on my DVR. Priorities, people.

Whatever the reason is, I blame my husband. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a messy, chaotic world to get back to.

One thing Peter Walsh did say that rang true for me was that the state of our homes reflects the state of our lives and our inner selves. I am totally feeling that right now. For a little while now I’ve been feeling like my life is sometimes out of control (which certainly can’t have anything to do with this almost ten month old little human I’m raising) and unbalanced. I have felt unfocused, unmotivated, and scatterbrained. I really do believe all of this is related to my surroundings. (There’s sort of a chicken or the egg thing going on here: Does my cluttered, disorganized house make me feel like I have no control, or is the fact that I feel like my life is out of control causing me to neglect my house and create clutter?)

I want to change this. I want more for myself and my little family. I have grand visions and dreams for all that we might one day do, but I really do feel like none of those new, great things can come into our lives if we are cluttering up the entryway with all our old junk.

However, not everything is junk, and some of the stuff around here I’d really like to keep, like Nate’s outgrown clothes and cloth diapers. I want to hold onto all this stuff for the next baby, but it’s quickly turning into The Land Where Large Plastic Rubbermaid Containers Go to Fulfill Their Destiny around here. We have these suckers everywhere, and they are all full. Even if our next kid is a girl her favorite color will be blue and she’s going to love trucks and puppies.

Well, you might say, just put all those storage containers in the guest bedroom closet. My response to that would be that you obviously haven’t been paying attention or you would know by now that that guest bedroom closet is absolutely, positively filled to the brim with all the other things I really must keep.

So, OK, I’m going to get this decluttering underway. I’m going to start with the small catch-all little cart, table thing in our kitchen (you know, the place where things go when we don’t know what else to do with them). OK, decluttering, decluttering, decluttering…now, what do I do with this world map sent to us by Doctors Without Borders? Not sure. Nate might like it when he’s a little older. Oh, and what about this list of all the gifts given to me at my baby shower? I know I sent thank you cards long ago, but I might need this list for something, so I better hold onto it. Hmmm, and what about these brochures for tourist attractions in San Jose, CA? Well, you never know, we might go to San Jose one day, and these brochures are going to come in really handy then.

Do you see?!! Three is my limit. After not knowing what to do with three things, I give up. It’s all too hard. Until one day I will realize that my desire for a better, more organized life will be greater than my inability to throw away all the junk cluttering up my kitchen (and by “kitchen” I mean “whole house”). I will realize that they will probably still be making maps by the time Nate is old enough to actually give a flip about maps, at which time I can buy him a new one; that I do not need a piece of paper that lists items I’ve been happily using for months; and, if we do ever go to San Jose I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about this gadget all the kids are using called Google, and apparently this Google can tell me everything I ever wanted to know about San Jose and all the cool places there.

Until then, I blame my husband. And my DVR. And maybe Nate, too, just for good measure. It’s gotta be somebody’s fault, right?